Importing DFSR debug & Event logs info vRealize Log Insight

If you're running a large DFS replication cluster with a large (millions) number of files, you probably have a very high turnover of both Windows Event logs and DFSR debug logs.

There are many log aggregation tools, from the freeware ELK stack and Greylog to the paid for Splunk and vRealize from VMware.  The vRealize Log Insight tool doesn't have the per GB licencing model that Splunk has, but also comes up a little short on functionality in the way of pre-built "apps".

Neither have an app for DFSR but luckily it doesn't take much in Log Insight to import the DFSR logs.  It's also (OVA) appliance based, so to add capacity you just deploy another appliance and join it to the cluster.

To import the DFSR logs you need to deploy the Windows Log Insight Agent to the file servers in question.

msiexec SERVERHOST=<log insight ip> /qn /i <agent msi filename>

Then once the agents are reporting into Log Insight, go to the administration page and choose management->Agents. Create a new group containing the File servers and enter this configuration

[filelog|DFSR_logs]
directory=C:\Windows\debug
include=Dfsr01000.log
event_marker=^\d\d\d\d\d\d\d\d\s\d\d:\d\d:\d\d.\d\d\d

[winlog|DFS_Replication]
channel=DFS Replication
tags={"ms_product":"activedirectory"}
parser=auto

This will ensure the DFSR debug logs are imported in multiline format as a datestamp is applied at the start of every new record.

Using Powershell values from the start of the pipeline in a table at the end.

There are two ways to deal with large arrays of nested objects in powershell.

One is a bunch of nested foreach loops which is nicely readable in scripts.

However the beauty of the pipeline is that you can run output from one command into the input for another, which is often the way to drill down into dependent objects.

One such example is Vmware portgroups in Powercli.

The hierachy can be several levels deep

e.g.

cluster
 -> host
   -> vswitch
      -> portgroup

I wanted to build a table showing portgroups on all hosts in a cluster, ignoring the default management kernel port

The command is quite simple.

Get-Cluster -name Cluster01 | Get-VMHost | Get-VirtualSwitch -name vSwitch0 | Get-VirtualPortGroup | where {$_.name -ne "Management Network" | select Name, VirtualSwitch | ft -autosize

This produces a nice table showing the portgourp name and the vswitch it's connected to.

However the hostname isn't a property of the portgroup, it's a property of the vswitch (or the host) so the question is how to show it in the table.

The answer is with the pipelinevariable command (introduced in PS4 and above) and a custom property expression.

Get-Cluster -name Cluster01 Get-VMHost | Get-VirtualSwitch -name vSwitch0 -PipelineVariable 'fi' | Get-VirtualPortGroup | where {$_.name -ne "Management Network"} | select Name, VirtualSwitch, @{Name = "VMHost";Expression = {($fi.vmhost)}} | ft -AutoSize

This returns a nice table of three columns, with the third column

Error scanning Dell hosts with VUM "Host cannot download files"

This is one possible solution for the error "Host cannot download files from VMware vSphere Update Manager patch store. Check the network connectivity and firewall setup, and check esxupdate logs for details"


If you're running Dell hosts and Openmanage, there is an issue with the Openmanage VIB 8.2.0 - 8.5.0 (possibly other versions but these are the ones I've tested).

Unzip the file and have a look at the index.xml file



In my case the line containing the tag had a typo - you'd have thought Dell could spell their name, especially when it's only 4 characters long. 

Edit this to be Dell and re-zip the files (making sure the files are in the root of the zipfile)

 
 

The bad news is that you can't manually remove VIBs from the VUM database once they've been imported, so you basically have to nuke your VUM config so first make a note of all your baselines / baseline groups.

At least you no longer have to uninstall and reinstall the database - there is a tool called VMwareUpdateManagerUtility.exe in the Update Manager application folder which will reset the database.  Run it, point it at your VUM server, login and choose the Database settings -> re-initialize database option:





You should now be able to re-import the new VIB zipfile and perform a scan.

Unfortunately if you have alot of baselines or baseline groups, you'll need to recreate them.

Cannot create KDS Root Key - “Request is not supported”

When trying to run the powershell command Add-KDSRootKey –EffectiveImmediately you get the error "Request is not supported" if the powershell console isn't running elevated as administrator.

Just right click on the powershell icon and run as administrator and rerun the command.

V2V error with vConverter standalone - Unable to obtain hardware information for the selected machine.

When converting a VMWare workstation format VM (V2V) you might get this error if you're trying to read the image from a network path with a deep folder structure.

The simple resolution is to map a drive letter at the top level so the vmx and vmdk files are visible directly under the drive letter.

The converter wizard will then allow you to progress to specifying the destination system.

Windows 2012 - how to disable "run as administrator" requirement

So you've just installed Windows 2012..

The first thing you do is turn off UAC just like in Windows 2008 to stop it prompting you every time java wants to update.  Great! no more popups that you're just going to click ok to every time.

Then you remember you need to edit the hosts file, but what's this? You can't save it?  What's going on?

The answer is you need to edit it with notepad that's been "run as administrator".  But that's going to be a hassle isn't it, so how do you disable this and go back to Windows 2008 behaviour?

The answer is to edit a registry key which controls the EnableLUA setting:
HKLM:\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Policies\System\EnableLUA
Default value Windows 2008 = 0
Default value Windows 2012 = 1

You can do it via regedit or run the powershell below, in a powershell prompt that of course has been run as administrator:

Set-ItemProperty -Path "HKLM:\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Policies\System" -Name "EnableLUA" -Value "0"

The server needs to be rebooted which you can do from powershell too:

shutdown -r -t 0

Hey presto, no more prompts.

Credit to this post for the solution.

Network Policy Server Role won't install on Windows 2008

I recently had a weird issue while trying to install TMG 2010 (Microsoft Threat Management Gateway) on Windows 2008R2 where the pre-requisites wouldn't install and kept giving an 0x80072afc error

I narrowed this down to the Network Policy Server role which wouldn't install.

Googling the error "windows could not start the network policy server services" along with the error code "0x80072afc" revealed quite a few articles, mostly relating to missing permissions on the IAS folder within the system directory and/or active directory issues.

I decided to take a clone of another known-working TMG as a workaround, but on this box the Network Policy Server service wouldn't start which led me to believe it wasn't permissions related.


The fix I eventually found was much simpler.  I'd been trying to install TMG with the server in a workgroup and disconected from the network.

I plugged in the network card so the server picked up an IP from DHCP and Hey Presto! the TMG pre-req wizard then completed ok!